SERMONS 

That's the Spirit!

Since we’re going to be talking about the links between spirituality, generosity and stewardship, I think I should admit up front that until the last year or so, I’ve struggled with the concept of spirituality. The word used to conjure images of ethereal beings floating above my head. What made this discomfort pronounced was that I, like many of you, came to Unitarian Universalism seeking some sort of spiritual context. So let me explain to you what I mean when I talk about spirituality. I have come to see spirituality as the sense of connection a person has with the rest of creation—connection with what came before, what is now and what comes after. For many people that involves connection with God, personal or otherwise, or some Creative Power or what has been called the Ultimate Mystery. For others it is the awe that comes with feeling our place in the infinite time and space of the universe. People are more or less spiritual, depending on their awareness of the connections and the effect that awareness has on their lives.

Religion, as I view the word, is a path by which one can explore and enhance his or her spirituality. Most religions have a prescribed set of practices, or disciplines, designed to strengthen the spiritual connections. And one almost universal practice is generosity, sacrifice or charity. Early Greeks practiced the “libation to the gods,” pouring the first drink from a cask or bottle of wine onto the ground in sacrifice. The Hebrew Bible and the Hindu Vedas, two of the earliest known sacred texts, set out instructions and hymns for sacrificing animals and produce. Tzedakah, or righteous giving, is the Jewish concept of tithing. Christian scriptures are filled with references to charity. The fourth pillar of Islam is Zakata, or setting aside a portion of one’s income for charity. And the first paramis, or perfection, in the Buddhist traditions, is generosity.

Why this universal incorporation of charity into religious practice? For some, charity, or sacrifice, is a display of gratitude to God and sense of duty to ensure future blessings. Many early religious leaders recognized that charity made a community stronger. It strengthened the bonds between members while it ensured that those in need were cared for. Buddhists believe that generosity, or dana, reverses the ego’s basic drive to absorb everything into itself. Instead of depleting resources, the continual act of giving—physically, psychologically and spiritually—actually brings richness and resourcefulness to the practitioner. Some churches have taught a “theology of abundance,” often emphasizing that charity reaps rewards of a material source to the charitable. Frankly, that always felt like a tainted rationale to me, not to mention smacking of magic and miracles from on high—until I read this passage from Sharon Salzburg [from “Generosity’s Perfection” in the March 2005 issue of Shambhala Sun magazine]:

… I was on retreat at the Insight Meditation Society and because I knew everybody on staff and had a lot of friends in the community, people kept giving me things. I’d go back to my room and something would be outside my door. I began to feel bad for the people who were sitting the retreat who didn’t know anybody and weren’t getting all of these extra things. So I started giving them away. I chose someone who would see my door frequently and had seen most of what I had gotten. I felt the worst about this one person, so I gave her something. I left it outside her door, and somehow from that point on in the retreat, she started receiving packages from home. Then she kept giving them to me, and I had to give them away to other people. An intense wellspring of affluence suddenly appeared. In that moment it felt as if we really were one; it didn’t matter where the things had come from. They just arose from our interest in taking care of each other, being good to one another.

Now it makes sense: Charity changes us and it changes the community we live in. Charity is a self-reinforcing practice. It creates abundance, not because more things magically appear, but because charity makes people more charitable, more loving.

So, within a religious context, why are so many Unitarian Universalists at best apathetic—and at worst even hostile—to the concept of financial support for our spiritual home? Why, when for some religions, charity is the first tenet, is money a four-letter word to many UUs? Here, with absolutely no scientific research to back any of this up, are a few reasons that have occurred to me—and an attempt to respond:

1. Some of us are still running from other churches where we had negative experiences relative to giving. We still connect any call for stewardship with our former church lives—and we resent and resist it. By the way, lifelong UUs have, according to at least one source, an even poorer track record of giving. It’s as though we view financial support of our religious institution as somehow dirty, or beneath us.
2. Many of us are caught up in today’s materialistic society and fear, consciously or otherwise, that meaningful contributions will diminish our ability to have those things we want. In our stewardship focus groups, some people reflected on our inability in today’s world to ever feel that we have “enough.” Don’t get me wrong—I’m an avowed hedonist! I think it would be a crime NOT to appreciate and partake of the wonders this world offers; but it’s a matter of balance. I do believe the wisdom of the scripture “…where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” What are we saying about our hearts when we write a bigger check each month to, say, Comcast, than we do to this religious community? We risk chaining ourselves to material possessions and losing our spiritual lives.
3. Perhaps there are some sitting here this morning who think this community and its liberal faith simply aren’t worth supporting. Given the expressions of joy and relief most of us have uttered on finding this community, I find that hard to believe.
4. Or similarly, there may be some who just don’t think the community needs support. Well, that’s just denying reality. Church homes—just like our own homes—require money for existence. Ministers, RE and Music directors, and other staff members deserve more than just our thanks for their work. And if we think you don’t need a tangible institution to support our search for spiritual truths, why didn’t we find what we were looking for on our own before we found this church?
5. Some UUs are quick to point out how much they donate to other causes—political, environmental, social justice. And besides, they say, First UU isn’t a charity like the food bank or other agency that directly serves the needy. True. But it’s not a case of either-or. The enduring presence of a vital UU community in Nashville plays a large role in furthering our political, environmental and social justice goals. It provides a community of mutual support to us in our activism and declares to others that there is a strong voice for our values. One member of this congregation described how he balances his giving this way, “I give 10% of my income to my source of spiritual nourishment. All other charity is on top of that.” That’s recognition of the power of charity to enhance our spiritual lives—and vice versa.
6. We have people in our congregation who are in real need. They can’t afford to make large financial contributions to the church. That’s very true. Some through choice or circumstance are at the lower end of the income scale. Others are dealing with loss of income, extraordinary long-term medical expenses, or other bumps in life’s road. Those things can hit any of us at any time, and our call as a religious community is to be responsive to people in those times. In a little bit, we’ll look at what we know about the demographics of this community, but for now, just let me say that there is a pretty significant body of research that shows people of lesser means tend to give more as a percentage of what they have than do those with greater incomes and assets. Could it be that those less well off are not as chained to material goods as their “better off” neighbors?

Underlying all the reasons I’ve just cited, I believe, is that most of us haven’t made the connection between spirituality and giving. And that’s not too surprising. We don’t spend a lot of time talking about it with prospective members. We haven’t talked much about it on Sunday mornings. And we’ve set things up to minimize the extent to which people have to think about their contribution. Reflect a minute: We pass the collection plate around and some of us drop checks in or a few bills. Most of us who have pledged continual support write a check once a month and mail it, or like my husband and me, have the bank send it electronically. If you’ve really decided to help the church with its accounts receivables, you’ve set up an automatic bank draft so you don’t even have to think about it—it just happens! Right now I know the Finance Committee is terrified that I’m going to suggest we stop that practice. I’m not. I’m just going to urge you to find a way to think on your contribution and what it means to our community. For example, even if you mail your pledge in each month, don’t let the collection plate go by on Sundays without dropping something in—and when you do, think of your contribution, what the gifts of this church mean to you and what your gifts mean to it. One couple told me that the first check they write each month is their pledge to the church. That does two things: It establishes their contribution not as “whatever’s left over,” but as what they have committed to up front. And secondly, it establishes a conscious time of charity in which they can be grateful for the gifts of this community and share with it what they have.

When your board of directors set its priorities for this church year, we placed stewardship at the top, right up there with Membership Development. We view stewardship as the support and care of this community, with an admitted emphasis on the financial aspects. The founders of this community gave us a precious gift when they made a home for liberal religion in Nashville. Now it is up to us to nurture it and preserve it for those who will come after us.

The board and the staff have spent a lot of time talking about what stewardship means to us. We talked at our retreat, we’ve talked in board meetings, we’ve talked through e-mail. And we’ve talked with our partners and spouses. And let me tell you, those conversations felt good. We’re beginning to recognize the importance of generosity (tithing, even) in the spiritual lives of ourselves and this community. Jason spoke last month of the Five Facets of Meaningful Membership, and named financial support as one of them. We believe that. In fact the board and staff believe so strongly in the concept of stewardship that together we have committed to pledging about 4.5% of our incomes to the support of this community. Most of us are also either tithing—giving 10% of our income—to all charitable causes, or we have set up a plan to work towards it. The board and staff represent a lot of different sectors of this church community. There are those with substantial incomes, those with far less. There are those of us who have family members with longer term health issues; some are about to be new parents; others are retired, living on assets built up in better economic times. We’re single, widowed, married or partnered. We’ve got young children, teenagers, grandchildren. In other words, we’re much like you.

I promised some demographics. There are some interesting numbers that came out of the survey that the Ministerial Search Committee conducted last summer. They asked “What is your personal annual income” excluding that of a spouse or partner. 194 people responded. That’s slightly less than half the membership of the church.

• One-fifth of those responding said their personal income was less than $24,000 a year;
• 34% said it was between $25K and $50,000;
• another fifth between $50 and $75 K;
• and $13% said it was between $75 and $100,000.
• 12% said they earned over $100,000 a year.

So we’re pretty typically spread across the spectrum, with the expected bulge in the middle. We’re not a rich church, not a poor church. I did some rough calculations based on these numbers and figured that as a whole, the income of this congregation is in the neighborhood of $18 to $20 million a year. Now—if our generosity rose to the level where people were giving an average of just 3% of their income to this community, that would raise over $500,000, about a 50% increase over our current level. If we could rise to the level of the board and staff’s giving, it would mean $800,000.

What would that level of commitment mean to us? Well, it would mean the maintenance of a safe physical, welcoming sanctuary for those seeking their own spiritual path. It would allow us to practice what we preach and pay our staff competitively, granting appropriate raises. It would mean a wide range of programs designed to meet the different religious and spiritual needs of our members. It would mean far greater outward charity on our part to programs and people in need throughout the Nashville area. It would transform us from a mindset of impoverishment to one of abundance.

Let me tie all this together. Spirituality is our sense of connection with the rest of creation. It is a connection with the past and future as well as with what is here now. Generosity brings us in touch with that spirituality. It reminds us of what we have been given by all who came before us, and it is our opportunity to leave a legacy to those who will follow.

There’s a reason we call them religious “practices.” We need to do them over and over again to get them right. To quote K. Peter Henrickson, a member of Community Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Vancouver, WA:

We need generosity of spirit: It is part of our spiritual presence to be responsive to the needs of others. There are those in our churches who need more than they give, whether spiritually, emotionally, or financially. In truth, none of us is generous all the time; we each have moments of need. We practice a generous spirit to remind ourselves of how we wish to be treated in our dark times.

The only way to have healthy, supportive communities is by starting today, and then to practice, practice, practice every day henceforth. As we master our practice, the community becomes more peaceful, more manageable, more integrated spiritually and emotionally, and more energetic in its impact on the rest of the world. Such a community becomes attractive to new members as well as old, inspires commitment to right living, and gets financial support. This is the entire reason for our effort. It is a noble purpose.

Blessed be and amen.